Appeals court rules in favor of teacher fired in Marshfield

The Massachusetts Appeals Court has upheld an arbitrator's decision that a Marshfield teacher was wrongly fired in 2008.

Jessica Trufant The Patriot Ledger @JTrufant_Ledger

MARSHFIELD - The state appeals court has upheld an arbitrator’s ruling that school officials were wrong to fire a special education teacher because his state license lapsed and deny him an unpaid leave of absence to pursue licensing.

The court ruled Tuesday that teacher Gerard O’Sullivan was entitled to the one-year unpaid leave of absence he requested under the Marshfield Education Association’s contract with the school committee, and that he should not have been fired.

The school committee assumed O’Sullivan’s employment with the district automatically ended in 2008 when the state did not renew his teaching license or issue a waiver. Believing O’Sullivan was not entitled to his contract, the committee denied him the right to take unpaid leave to pursue licensing, and instead fired him outside union procedure, the ruling states.

John M. Becker of Sandulli Grace P.C. in Boston, an attorney for O’Sullivan and the Marshfield Education Association, said he is pleased with the ruling.

“The court clearly understood the difference between what it means to have a license as a professional teacher and what it means to be an employee,” he said. “Those are different things with different consequences, and just because you lose one, you don’t lose the other.”

The district hired O’Sullivan in December of 2000 to teach students with disabilities in the alternative high school program. He was not licensed when he was hired, the decision says, but he obtained his preliminary license to teach English in March of 2001.

That license expired in March of 2006. In December of 2005, O’Sullivan applied for a second-tier license to teach English and students with moderate disabilities. He was granted state waivers for the 2006-2007 and 2007-2008 school years as he worked toward licensing.

The ruling states a “great deal of miscommunication” between O’Sullivan, the state and school officials followed, and a third waiver was denied in August of 2008. O’Sullivan was then terminated.

An arbitrator determined O’Sullivan’s employment did not legally end, and he was still entitled to his contract. School officials challenged that decision.

A superior court judge in 2012 backed the arbitrator’s decision, which the school committee requested the state appeals court overturn.

Tuesday’s ruling means the district will have to offer O’Sullivan his job back, Becker said. “They do have one more route of appeal if they want to take it, and I would encourage them not to, but it’s their choice,” he said.

James Toomey, an attorney for the school committee, could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Becker said he and O’Sullivan have not discussed whether he plans to work in Marshfield. Becker said O’Sullivan is licensed and employed as a teacher, though he declined to say where.

Whether the district will pay any lost wages has not been discussed, but Becker hopes the parties will hash out what O’Sullivan would have made if the arbitrator’s decision went forward in 2008. “If he continued working and things had gone the way the arbitrator intended, would he have made more money than he actually made? I honestly don’t know the answer to that,” he said.